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Today's
Stories
July
17, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Apocalypse Now: Why the Book of Revelations
is Must Reading
July
16, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Adonal Foyle: Master of the Lefty Lay-Up
Shervan
Sardar
Dershowitz, the ICJ and Jim Crow Laws
Ron
Jacobs
The Lil' Engine That Couldn't: Kucinich Surrenders on Anti-War
Plank
Robert
Fisk
Iraq, According to Edgar Allen Poe:
Coffin Bombs in Baghdad
Greg
Moses
The Forts of Iraq
Mickey
Z.
Ad Infinitum?: Presidential Campaigns in the Age of TV
Dan
Bacher
A Landmark Win for Salmon and the Tribes
Dave
Lindorff
The Mumia Case: Support from NAACP,
But a Movement in Shambles
Paul
McGeough
Did Allawi Shoot Inmates in Cold Blood?
Website
of the Day
10 Reasons to Fire Bush (and 9 Reasons Kerry Won't Be Any Better)
July
15, 2004
Heather
Williams
McMissing
the Point: Supersize Me Crashes on Its Message
Werther
Iraq: Follow the Money
Tom
Crumpacker
The Birds of Guantanamo
Brian
Cloughley
What Does the Bush Regime Object To?
Bill
Christison
Reorganize the CIA? Of Course,
But...
July
14, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Chronicle of a Nomination Foretold:
the Green Deceivers
Neve
Gordon
Of Socrates and the Apartheid Wall
Diane
Christian
The Priesthood of Death
Stefan
Wray
Who Benefits from Missing Data at Los Alamos Nuclear Lab?
Josh
Frank
The Nader / Dean Debate
Conn
Hallinan
Divide and Conquer as Imperial Rules
Elizabeth
Weill-Greenberg
Bring My Brother Home!: Class, War
and Education
Website
of the Day
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of US Empire
July
13, 2004
Ray
McGovern
The CIA and Iraq: an Intelligence
Debacle...and Worse
Mark
Donham
The Sierra Club's Inexplicable Treatment of Cynthia McKinney
Ben
Tripp
Politus Interruptis: With Friends Like
These, Who Needs Electorates?
Mark
Gaffney
Slipping Towards Armageddon: Israel
in Iraq
Dave
Lindorff
Osama Wins! Election Postponed!
Chris
White
Double Think: the Bedrock of Marine
Indoctrination
July
10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
July
9, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Carlos Delgado on Deck: Blue Jays Slugger
Stands Up Against War
Justin
Delacour
Wishing Kerry Would Shut Up About
Latin America
Robert
Fisk
Iraq in Reverse: Martial Laws Fuel Insurgency
Boris
Kagarlitsky
Two Congresses and a Funeral
William
S. Lind
The October Surprises
Sibel
Edmonds
Our Broken System: John Ashcroft's War on Truth
Ron
Jacobs
Reading Tea Leaves: What Vietnam Tells Us About Iraq's Future
Gary
Leupp
The Lie That Will Not Die: Cheney and
the Iraq/al-Qaeda Link
July
8, 2004
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Inexplicable John McCain
Toufic
Haddad
Protesting Israel's Apartheid Wall:
a Letter from the Hunger Strikers' Tent
Dave
Lindorff
Liberation as Martial Law
Joshua
Frank
The Fall: How Beltway Dems Sank Howard
Dean
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush & Cheney Play the Hitler Card
James
Petras
The Truth About Jimmy Carter
July
7, 2004
John
Chuckman
Kerry's BBQ: a Deafening Silence
of Meaning
Virginia
Tilley
A Line in the Sand: Azmi Bishara's
Hunger Strike
Susan
Martinez
A Letter to Bill Cosby
Mickey
Z
Elie Wiesel's Strange Parade
Michael
Donnelly
Our Own Private Wilderness: Trusting the Land in the Inland Empire
Sean
Donahue
Boston Social Forum: the Dems aren't the Only Show in Beantown
Diane
Christian
Sovereignty and Freedom in Iraq
July
6, 2004
Lisa
Viscidi
Fleeing Guatemala: Central Americans
Risk Lives to Reach El Norte
Marc
Norton
The Felonious Five Ride Again: the
Supreme Court and Enemy Combatants
James
Brooks
Chemical Warfare on the West Bank?
Ray
McGovern
Porter Goss as CIA Director?
William
Cook
Legacy of Deceit: If Dante Knew of Bush and the Neo-Cons...
July
5, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
US Imperialism in Latin America: Sept.
11, July 4 and Systematic Torture
Chris
White
A Former Marine Sgt. on the Meaning
of Independence Day
Joe
Bageant
Cranky Reflections on the 4th of July
Robert
Jensen
Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore
Misses About the Empire
Kathy
Kelly
"Two Days an' a Wake-Up"
July
3 / 4, 2004
Elaine
Cassel
Bush's Police State and Independence
Day
Stan
Goff
ABC of Opportunism: "Progressive"
Latin American Leaders Support the Coup in Haiti
Snehal
Shingavi
"We Want Real Justice for Bhopal": Two Survivors Speak
Out
Bruce
Anderson
The Cheney-Leahy Metaphor and the Greens
Sharon
Smith
Twilight of the Greens: the Chokehold of "Anybody But Bush"
Josh
Frank
Ralph Nader's Revolt: an Interview with Greg Bates
Robert
Fisk
Pentagon Tried to Censor Saddam's Hearing
Joe
Bageant
Sons of a Laboring God: Leftnecks Unite!
Brian
Cloughley
Fortress Bush and the One Law Doctrine
Justin
Delacour
The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber: Venezuela's Media Tycoons
William
S. Lind
Saudi Spillover
Linda
S. Heard
A Joke Called "Justice"
Greg
Moses
"It's Illegal, But It's Our Right": Korean Labor Won't
Back Down
Ron
Jacobs
"Ain't You Proud to be White on Independence Day?"
Toni
Solo
Weary of Indigenous Resistances? Just Pretend They're Not There
Dan
Nagengast
Chicken Manure as Cattle Food: Safe, But Do We Want to Eat It?
Stew
Albert
Brando, a Personal Recollection
Dave
Zirin
From the Black Panthers to Sacheen Littlefeather: a Eulogy for
Our Brando
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Progressive Case for Dodgeball
Steven
Rosenthal / Junaid Ahmad
The Problem is Bigger Than the Bushes: a Review of F911
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Ford and Davies
Website
of the Day
Global Peace Solution
July
2, 2004
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Suicide Right on the Stage: the Demise
of the Green Party
Douglas
Valentine
Fahrenheit 911: Mocking the Moral Crisis of Capitalism
Gary
Leupp
"Just Because I Could": On Obscenities and Opportunities
Lee
Ballinger
Illegal People: Kerry Opposes Immigrant Rights
Robert
Fisk
Saddam in the Dock: Confused? Hardly
CounterPunch
Wire
"What Law Formed This Court?": a Transcript of Saddam's
Arraignment
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush's Drug Card Lottery: the Price Ain't Right
Saul
Landau
Buzz Words and Venezuela
July 1, 2004
Katherine
van Wormer
Bush's Damaged Mind: the Madness in
His Method
Joe
Bageant
Is Our President a Whackjob? Does It Matter?
William
James Martin
The Dogma of Richard Perle
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Evacuation Moment
Robert
Fisk
Bread and Circus Trials in Iraq
Alan
Maass
Green Party in Reverse
Website
of the Day
Michael Moore and Israel: Blind or a Coward?
June
30, 2004
Kurt Nimmo
Nicholson
Baker's Checkpoint: a New Kind of Anger About Bush
Tariq
Ali
Getting Away with Murder in Iraq
Jennifer
Van Bergen
Bush and the Detainees
Douglas
Valentine
Apotheosis of the Psychopaths: Instead of Fahrenheit 9/11, Rescreen
The Quiet American
David
Price
Fahrenheit 9/11 Through the McCain-Feingold Looking Glass
Roger
Normand
America's Criminal Occupation of Iraq
Stan
Cox
Sanitized for Your Protection: Ashcroft's
War on Art
Henry
David Thoreau
On the Futility of Bush v. Kerry: All Voting is a Kind of Gaming
Ben
Tripp
Who Dast Call Him Liar: a Rebuttal to Nicholas Kristof
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
July 17 / 18, 2004
The
Indonesian Elections
Carter:
"I Don't See Anything Wrong with Generals Running the Country"
By
BEN TERRALL
On July 5, Indonesians went to the polls
to vote in the country's first direct presidential election.
Jimmy Carter, observing the process in his role as saviour of
enlightened capitalism, enthused, "Of the 50 elections the
Carter Center has monitored, I would place this one at a very
high level." Carter told reporters at a Jakarta polling
station, "This is a wonderful transition from authoritarian
rule to purely democratic rule in just six years."
As counting of votes continues,
retired general Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is clearly in the lead
but will not get the 50% of the vote necessary to avoid a September
20 runoff election, likely against sitting president Megawati
Sukarnoputri, who almost definitely will squeeze veteran general
and indicted war criminal Wiranto out of the running.
Though Carter discounted "a
few minor problems" that internationals observed, local
groups -- the Center for Electoral Reform (Cetro), the People's
Network for Voter Education (JPPR) and the People's Network for
Elections Monitoring (JAMPPI) -- argued the electoral process
was far from free and fair.
Those independent organizations,
which deployed 130,000 observers to monitor the elections throughout
the archipelago, found that 32 percent of voters in over 1,400
polling stations were unregistered but still allowed to vote.
They further reported that 10 percent of voters at over 1,200
polling stations were "intimidated" by other voters,
campaign teams and poll committees.
Damien Kingsbury, an Australian
academic who has written several books about Indonesian politics,
told CounterPunch, "I think the Carter Center has been particularly
naive. Of course, it could have been worse, and encouragement
is always useful. But their assessment is not accurate."
The most serious logistical
snafu involved inconsistent approaches to dealing with ballots
unintentionally punched twice (due to being folded when voters
poked a nail through them to indicate preference).
The Indonesian election commission
ordered the double-punched ballots to be counted as valid as
long as the voter's intention was clear, but that directive arrived
late at many of Indonesia's 585,000 polling stations. Hence millions
of ballots are being recounted; the final result will be announced
no later than July 26.
Regardless of which candidate
ultimately assumes the presidency, the Indonesian military (TNI)
will be a winner and retain its traditional position of dominance.
Megawati Sukarnoputri has been thoroughly subservient to the
military. As Jakarta-based writer Samuel Moore told CounterPunch,
"Megawati has already proved herself worthless, incompetent,
spineless. She hasn't even had the guts to rehabilitate the name
of her father [Sukarno, Indonesia's first President] after all
the vilification of him by the New Order. She has turned over
the military to the worst elements, the most idiotic and conservative
officers, like army chief of staff Ryacudu."
Though pegged by Washington
and the Western press as a "reformer", Yudhoyono, popularly
known as "SBY" in Indonesia, is also no challenge to
the status quo. John M. Miller, spokesperson for the East Timor
Action Network, which has campaigned against U.S. support for
the Indonesian military since 1991, told CounterPunch, "SBY's
main virtue is that he has not been indicted. As Megawati's security
minister, he was involved in implementing extremely repressive
policies in Aceh and West Papua. He was Wiranto's top deputy
in 1999, when Indonesian troops levelled East Timor. He attended
the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
and is extremely unlikely to challenge military prerogatives."
In a January 2004 speech, Yudhoyono
reassured military hardliners by saying, "Democracy, human
rights, concern for the environment and other concepts being
promoted by Western countries are all good, but they cannot become
absolute goals because pursuing them as such will not be good
for the country."
When army chief Ryacudu called
Yudhoyono's Democratic Party to ask why their website featured
a campaign commitment to military reform, he was quickly reassured
it was the work of a hacker, not party policy-makers.
Yudhoyono knows what the Bush
Administration wants to hear from world leaders. "Indonesia
is trying hard to fight terrorism," he has pledged. "I
will improve law enforcement and skills of the police to fight
terrorism...if I am elected." He has said, "Our task
is to create a better climate for investors," and told the
Financial Times, "It is very important that we make the
international community comfortable." Rizal Prasetijo, a
vice president and stock-market strategist with J.P. Morgan Securities
in Indonesia, told the Wall Street Journal, "The financial
markets want to see Yudhoyono win."
Carter is predictably sanguine
about the hazards of a general leading the new, improved Indonesia.
"I don't see anything wrong with having military leaders
become president of the country," he explained. "Obviously
if any powerful military figure who's still active or who's just
recently retired showed an inclination to restore authoritarian
rule, or strongman rule, my confidence is that the people of
Indonesia will reject
this person, overwhelmingly."
In an e-mail interview, Ed
McWilliams, political counselor for the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta
from 1996 to 1999, responded that "Carter's comment flows
from an acceptable generic democratic analysis but ignores the
specific Indonesian experience, which includes a three decade-long
military dictatorship. It also overlooks the undemocratic military
dominance of political life in Indonesia where the military maintains
a parallel bureaucratic structure to that of the civilian government,
extending down to village level. It might have also dawned on
Carter that a brutal, unaccountable military with a horrible
human rights record is not likely to produce an Eisenhower as
a Presidential candidate."
Human rights activist Munir,
a well-respected veteran of the dark days of the Suharto dictatorship,
told the Australian paper The Age that, if elected, Yudhoyono
would be likely to quash efforts to bring military offenders
to justice for past atrocities. Munir noted that in Indonesia,
the president is in a "very strong position to decide whether
atrocities from the past should be heard in a human rights court
or not." Munir also recalled Yudhoyono saying in 1997 that
there was nothing wrong with Suharto's New Order regime.
In the midst of the TNI's September
1999 destruction of East Timor, Yudhoyono told a press conference,
"I am worried of opinion being formed in the international
community that what happened in East Timor is a great human tragedy,
ethnic cleansing or a large-scale crime, when in reality, it
is not.
"I have been stationed
in Bosnia," he continued. "Please do not picture that
what happened in East Timor is as bad as the human tragedies
in Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo."
But in a scathing piece in
the Washington Post, reporter Keith Richburg responded: "I
have not been to the Balkans, unlike the general, who was part
of a peacekeeping mission there. But based on my years covering
Rwanda and Somalia, I can attest to one thing: The tragedy of
East Timor is indeed as bad as anything I witnessed in Africa.
When it comes to slaughter, the Rwandans and the Somalis have
a new competitor on the block.
"The razing of Dili has
certainly been as bad--one might say as thorough--as the destruction
of MogadishuThe only difference is that in Somalia the destruction
was mostly random in Dili, it was more systematic. The East
Timorese voted overwhelmingly for independence, so the Indonesian
soldiers, and their militia proteges, were determined to leave
them a capital not worth having."
As one of the many international
observers driven from East Timor during the September 1999 terror,
this writer can also attest to the unified military, police and
militia presence in the scorched-earth campaign. Thanks in part
to inadequate forensics teams which followed international peacekeepers
into the territory before the rainy season, the number of bodies
dumped by the military and its militia pawns can only be guessed
at.
Like Yudhoyono, Jimmy Carter
-- though famous for his alleged commitment to human rights --
was hardly a harsh critic of the New Order. In late 1977, the
Indonesian military was running out of weaponry to use against
the people of East Timor, which Jakarta had invaded with the
blessings of Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger in 1975. Carter's
"human rights" administration responded by authorizing
$112 million in commercial arms sales for fiscal year 1978 to
Jakarta, up from $5.8 million the previous year. Vice President
Mondale even flew to Jakarta to help broker shipments of fighter
planes to the Suharto regime. An Australian parliamentary commission
described the following few years of occupation as characterized
by "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World
War II history."
Not surprisingly, the Carter
Center website's skimpy historical overview of Indonesian history
sticks to the passive voice construction favored by the New York
Times: "After 40 years of military-backed governments, Indonesia
began a democratic transition in 1998." Thus, the Center
disingenuously conflates the governments of left-leaning nationalist
Sukarno, one of the founders of the Non-Aligned Movement, and
Suharto, who seized power from Sukarno in 1964 and subsequently
launched a U.S.-backed anti-communist bloodbath that Amnesty
International estimates killed "many more than one million"
Indonesians.
The Center's July 7 statement
ends with the milquetoast qualification, "We are disappointed
that the government of Indonesia prevented The Carter Center
from observing the election in Ambon and limited our activities
in other regions. We urge the responsible authorities to provide
domestic and international observers full access to all aspect
[sic] of the election process throughout the country." Like
Papua and Aceh, Ambon is one of the areas where, as Damien Kingsbury
writes, the military "has trained armed vigilante groups
to deflect from the military responsibility for atrocities."
In its future reports on the Indonesian electoral process, the
Carter Center could improve upon its entirely predictable analysis
by considering Professor Kingsbury's observation that "Reports
from North Aceh on election day said soldiers had been rounding
up villagers who were reluctant to vote, forcing them to the
polling booths and telling them to vote for Yudhoyono."
Aceh is virtually sealed off to outsiders and is under an intensely
repressive state of "civil emergency"; it's difficult
to see how free and fair elections could be possible there, even
if any of the candidates actually represented the aspirations
of local inhabitants.
But Carter's job, as
James Petras laid out in an excellent recent piece about the
former president's missions in the Western Hemisphere, is
not to elucidate realities on the ground in contested zones.
It is to help facilitate the U.S. agenda for the rest of the
world, including "Washington consensus" economics,
which leaves little room for accurate assessment of military
abuses of power.
Ben Terrall is a San Francisco-based writer and
activist who co-edits the journal Indonesia
Alert!; he can be reached at bterrall@igc.org
Weekend Edition
Features for July 10 / 12, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
The Problem with Neutrality Between
Palestinians and Israel
Janine
Pommy Vega
Trail of the Comet: a Gathering of the World's Poets Against
War
Sherry
Wolf
From Maverick to Party Attack Dog: Howard Dean Gay-Bashes Nader
Saul
Landau and Farrah Hassen
A Transfer of Power, Sort Of
Michael
Donnelly
How to Steal an Election: the Green Version, 2004
Stanton
/ Madsen
Iraq Survey Group: Rumsfeld's al-Qaeda?
Richard
Lichtman
The End of Innocence: Reflections on American Pathology
Gila
Svirsky
Thank You, Your Honors: a Legal Blow to the Wall
Kurt
Nimmo
Clinton's Life
Toni
Solo
Empire-Speak: What Roger Noriega Really Means
Ron
Jacobs
The Black Panthers and the Rest
Camelo
Ruiz Marrero
Gene Warfare in Oaxaca: Genetic Mutation of Mexican Maize
Omar
Barghouti
Wither the Empire: Rise of a Global Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Curtis and Albert
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